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If Anyone Gets the Nobel, It’s Moon and Kim

Donald Trump, Nobel laureate? It is a jarring vision, but one
that inched a little closer to reality after the seemingly amiable
meeting between the U.S. president and North Korean dictator Kim
Jong Un on Tuesday morning in Singapore. South Korean President
Moon Jae-in had already proposed Trump for the prize following the
Panmunjom talks between North and South Korea that preceded the
summit.

Some of Trump’s fans gave him credit for achieving peace
in our time even before the summit, chanting “Nobel, Nobel,
Nobel” at a rally in late April. But the truth is that if
there is a trip to Norway in the offing, Moon himself will be a far
more deserving winner than Trump, even if his modesty — or
cunning — means giving Trump the credit. And much as we might
dislike it, Kim probably belongs on the stage too.

Talk of the peace prize is obviously premature. Trump’s
meeting with Kim had great visuals, but there was no real deal
struck and certainly no pledge of denuclearization from the North.
And this isn’t the first summit to cause hopes to soar for
inter-Korean reconciliation.

The blusterer-in-chief
might blunder into a good deal with North Korea. But that won’t
happen without the actions of several worthier
candidates.

Still, definitive pessimism is overdone. In important ways, Kim
appears different from his father and grandfather — more
interested in economic development, more comfortable on the
international stage, and perhaps even serious about a deal, though
one that won’t come cheap.

But let’s optimistically assume that the deal does make
substantial progress — if not toward the “full and
speedy denuclearization” the Trump administration insists
upon, then at least toward a formal peace on the peninsula and a
serious thaw in relations between North and South.

Denuclearization is desirable but not essential for American
security, because a nuclear North Korea could be deterred. Thus,
understandings short of full nuclear disarmament still could leave
the peninsula more stable. A freeze on missile and nuclear
development, especially if backed by inspections, could promote
peninsular and regional peace and stability. Conventional forces
and deployments also could be adjusted to make war less likely.
Regular communication could be established. Any of these would
represent significant progress in a region where hostilities have
flared for decades.

If so, should Trump be standing on the stage in Oslo?

The theory is that by trading insult for insult and threatening
to blow up Northeast Asia, the president frightened North Korea
into coming to the table. That might seem plausible, but Kim seems
like a man confident in his power, not scared. North Koreans I
spoke with last year seemed befuddled by the administration, not
afraid of it. Most U.S. analysts view a U.S. attack as a wild
gamble. And despite his bluster, so far, Trump has avoided any
actions that would actually prompt serious conflict.

If Washington’s confrontational behavior forced anything,
it likely was a change in strategy rather than objective. Kim told
a high-level Korean Workers’ Party meeting earlier this year that the regime had finished
the nuclear prong of its byungjin, or parallel development
policy, so Pyongyang now would concentrate on economics. He did not
suggest that his government completed the program only to give it
away. To the contrary, in his New Year’s address this year,
Kim proclaimed that North Korea now possessed “a
powerful and reliable war deterrent, which no force and nothing can
reverse.”

But continuing to formally resist denuclearization would ensure
continued confrontation with the United States. That may explain
Pyongyang’s feint toward South Korea. The latter creates the
possibility of deals short of full denuclearization, while making
U.S. military action less likely. This is not a strategy of
desperation, but one of patience. So much for the president taking
credit.

Another possible Nobel nominee is Chinese President Xi Jinping,
for applying economic pressure on North Korea. But did Trump force
China’s leader to do America’s bidding?

Probably not. Although U.S. pressure may have accelerated the
China’s move up the sanctions ladder, the Xi
government’s patience already was running thin. Beijing was
tightening sanctions and enforcement every time North Korea
conducted another missile or nuclear test. Xi also refused to meet
Kim, despite having regular contact with South Korea’s
president, until the crisis seemed to be reaching a breaking
point.

The sanctions caused the North’s economy significant pain,
but hardship isn’t new for North Koreans: a half-million or
more people died of starvation in the late 1990s, and the North
Korean economy kept growing throughout the sanctions. There is no
reason to assume that Kim would sacrifice geopolitical ends in
order to improve his people’s lives.

Moreover, Kim’s summit gambit generated leverage with
China. By engineering a bilateral meeting with the United States,
Pyongyang isolated Beijing. Rumors that the North would no longer
insist on withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the South may
have been a signal to China that North Korea was not going to
protect the former’s interests. Anyway, Xi invited Kim to
visit. Beijing may have made additional concessions to ensure its
involvement in upcoming negotiations. So, Xi doesn’t appear
to be the prime mover behind the North’s pirouette.

Give credit to Kim Jong Un. He set off the present process with
his New Year’s address, in which he suggested that “the
south Korean authorities should respond positively to our sincere
efforts for a detente” and “a climate favorable for
national reconciliation and reunification should be
established.” He even “earnestly wish[ed] the Olympic
Games a success” and offered “to dispatch our
delegation and adopt other necessary measures.”

This was not Kim’s first expression of interest in
diplomacy. In the Washington Post, David Ignatius pointed to North Korean statements five years
ago indicating a desire for better relations with the United
States. After “completing” the North’s nuclear
deterrent, Kim probably believed he was negotiating from a position
of strength, not the weakness Trump hoped he could prey on.

Kim’s New Year’s offer was particularly potent
because it responded to South Korean fears that the North would
attempt to disrupt the latest Olympics, like the one three decades
before. Kim followed up by offering to meet Trump and take a number
of conciliatory steps. If the latter prove to be ploys, as many
believe, there will be no Nobel for anyone. However, if peace and
stability advance, Kim will be the one taking his nation into a
brighter future.

But one of the best candidates may be Moon himself. Shortly
after taking office, the South Korean president announced that he
planned to sit in the “driver’s seat” when it
came to North Korea.

His pacific nature made the apparent breakthrough possible. Moon
was elected last year more in spite of than because of his
commitment to reconciliation with the North, and he tempered his
policy in response to a skeptical public and a hostile Trump.
Nevertheless, Moon — who cut his teeth in high-level politics
as one of the architects of the old Sunshine Policy — made
outreach to North Korea a priority after his inauguration last May.
Most important, he ran through the opening made by Kim. The
Olympics cooperation led to the inter-Korean summit, with the
official slogan “Peace, a new start,” and plans for the
Kim-Trump meeting.

If Kim and Trump reach a real agreement, they will owe their
success to Moon’s persistence. The progress made by the two
Korean leaders might even survive a Trump tantrum if North Korea
kicks back against his claims of nuclear compliance. South Koreans
have an obvious reason to resist U.S. threats of war. Given images
of a seemingly reasonable Kim meeting leaders of both South Korea
and the United States, even Americans might not be convinced that
there is an urgent need for military action that could lead to
full-scale war. And after his fulsome praise for Kim at the summit,
the president’s madman shtick can no longer seem as
plausible.

Who gets the Nobel for Korean peacemaking? We’ll have to
wait and see if there is a peace to reward. In any case, there are
better candidates than Donald Trump. The blusterer-in-chief might
blunder into a good deal with North Korea. But that won’t
happen without the actions of several worthier candidates.

Doug Bandow is
a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special
assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author of several
books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.